THE ASTRAL DIMENSION: Galassia M81 LP

Fabio Borgazzi – aka Fabio Fabor – played literally every known style of music, from baroque to satanic electronic, in his library music albums released during his career which lasted almost seven decades. Born in Milan in 1920, Fabor was one of the great artisans of post-war Italian popular music. Author, arranger and conductor with a classical background, he started writing songs (in the 1950’s and 1960’s) for popstars such as Nilla Pizzi, Johnny Dorelli and Milva; he then turned to music for theatre, cinema and tv, to which he dedicated the rest of his career. In 1981, when he released Galassia M81, Fabor was a veteran in the scene of library music, both as an author and an editor. It was the so-called golden age for the genre, just a moment before the advent of MIDI – which made everything easier, but flatter too, putting an end to the Italian Touch. The tracks featured here (credited to the fictional combo The Astral Dimension: Fabor together with his friend Antonio Arena) still have a definite Seventies taste, reminding the wave of German kosmische musik (especially the Darmstad school), but they also reflect the Moog-mania raging in pop music after the big success of Walter/Wendy Carlos with the Switched On series. Avant-garde and kitsch hand in hand, ambient for documentaries and background music for horoscopes… all in sequence, with the only purpose of being used and generating royalties. Apparently there’s nothing poetic here, but the deepest core of this music is full of substance and genius, mixing a classical background with a futuristic twist – something that made so special a lot of the best music written in Italy during the 20th century.